Trafigura’s Compensation Must Reach the Victims

Oil traders Trafigura have gone to a great deal of effort to make the story about toxic waste dumping in Ivory Coast go away – from using law firm Carter-Ruck to initiate libel proceedings against the Guardian and BBC, to attempting to stop questions about it being raised in the House of Commons. They’ve even paid $45 million to Ivory Coast in compensation to 30,000 victims (which was on top of $200 paid to the government for the clean-up operation), but even that is far from the end of the story:

A court in the Ivory Coast has ruled that compensation due to thousands of victims of dumped waste should not be paid to one man to distribute.

Oil trading company Trafigura had agreed to pay $45m (£27m) to 30,000 victims in an out-of-court settlement.

Claude Ghourou argued he should be given responsibility for the money, but there were doubts he would pass it on.

However, despite the ruling the money remains blocked and victims cannot yet gain access to their compensation.

Before the ruling Amnesty International intervened, urging:

the authorities in Côte d’Ivoire to ensure that £27 million compensation paid by the oil trading company Trafigura to victims of one of the worst toxic dumping scandals in recent years reaches the people to whom it is owed.

Amnesty has also written to the UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw, urgently asking him to contact his counterpart in the Côte d’Ivoire to press for swift action to prevent a potentially massive fraud being perpetrated. The call came as thousands of the victims of the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Abidjan, capital of Côte d’Ivoire, wait anxiously to receive their money.